Blind Mans Bluff: The Untold Story of Cold War Submarine Espionage [Paperback]

This book basically takes the reader through the secret history of submarine intelligence missions over the course of the Cold War years and beyond. Many of these tales prove once again that truth is oftentimes stranger than fiction. Triumph and tragedy abound. The book also serves as a primer of sorts for the history of the Cold War; the interplay between different American administrations, naval chiefs and admirals, larger-than-life sub captains, and brilliant civilian naval administrators immerses you in the full scope of military planning, action, reaction, and sometimes overreaction. The biggest mistakes that were made all seem to fall in the lap of admirals and high-ranking naval officers and administrators, and these mistakes put many lives in danger and caused a number of unnecessary deaths. The dangerous obstinacy of government bureaucracy is a problem we continue to deal with today.

Submarines fulfilled innumerable intelligence-gathering missions during the decades after World War II. Subs infiltrated Russian waters to glean data about Soviet hardware, missile technology, and military behavior patterns; they secretly tailed all manner of Soviet subs across the oceans in order to identify each type of craft by the slightest of sounds and to learn the practices and tendencies of Soviet sub commanders (helping to ensure that the Soviets would be hard pressed to ever launch a massive nuclear first- or second-strike via the sea); they searched for valuable military hardware (both American and Soviet) along the ocean floor; and they brought home some of the most critical intelligence findings imaginable.

Among the more remarkable stories detailed here are the Navy's successful attempts to locate a lost Soviet nuclear sub (which the CIA later attempted - embarrassingly unsuccessfully - to salvage from the bottom of the ocean), the mysterious loss of the US sub Scorpion (along with new information that would seem to finally explain the cause of the tragedy), and the collision of an American sub with one of its Soviet counterparts (just one of a surprising number of such collisions). Perhaps the most fascinating account to be found in Blind Man's Bluff is America's secret tapping of Soviet military cables underneath the sea off Okhotsk and in the Barents Strait. Submarines made a number of undetected trips to the discovered cables, hiding in relatively shallow waters literally just beneath the Soviet navy's very nose for days at a time, to collect and replace recorded tapes that gave Naval Intelligence an unprecedented look at Soviet plans and capabilities as well as crucial insight into the Soviet military psyche itself.

You will meet some incredible heroes and brilliant intellectuals in this book: men such as John Craven, Commander Whitey Mack, Admiral Bobby Inman, and Tommy Cox, a would-be country singer who immortalized the deeds of his fellow submariners (and memorialized those who didn't make it back home) in song. Then there are John A. Walker, Jr. and Ronald W. Pelton, two of the worst traitors in American history. Walker spent eighteen years building a spy ring that turned over an immense number of secrets to the Soviets for less than one million dollars, while Pelton informed the Soviets of the Okhotsk cable tap for a mere $35,000. These men put the lives of hundreds of brave submariners at risk, greatly compromising their nation's security in the process, and will stand forever among the most infamous of American traitors.

If you want to know what peril under the sea can really mean, read the amazing accounts chronicled in Blind Man's Bluff. America's submariners played a crucial role in our nation's defense for decades, but only now are their stories being told. It is a secret history more thrilling than that borne of the imaginations of the best military science fiction writers.

This book uncovers new tales and fleshes out details of other previously encountered stories. The research behind the stories is impressive, as is the level of access the authors seem to have obtained.

This book conveys an objective view of both countries activities during the period and doesn't suffer from the propaganda trap many other works suffer. However, it focuses more on the American escapades, probably due to Soviet secrecy hangovers.

The only slight disappointment is that this book covers a relatively small number of tales. However, this is balanced by the superb detail of each piece.

I can certainly recommend this book.